Action Ordered At High School

Accreditation At Risk For Fall

Hartford Public High School has received notice that it must show more improvement by October or risk losing accreditation.

In a letter released Tuesday, the New England Association of Schools & Colleges added a new area in need of improvement so the school is now considered to have deficiencies in eight of 10 categories.

Although the letter said considerable progress has been made at Hartford Public -- 2,000 new books; a second librarian; school improvements; and new academic goals for students -- it also found significant faults.

The latest report comes a year after a division of the agency recommended the school lose its accreditation. After an unsuccessful appeal of that recommendation, the school began a legal challenge to the association. Eventually, the association withdrew the recommendation, and instead put the school on probation.

Many of the new criticisms involve a lack of coordination between the curriculum and the way students are taught. Teachers give too many lectures, there is not a sufficient range of courses to meet student needs and there is no way to measure whether students achieve the goals set by the school, the letter said.

Principal Joseph Wall Tuesday night asked the board of trustees overseeing the schools for help, saying the six weeks left until the end of the school year are not enough to make the changes required by the association before an October deadline.

He alluded to the enormity of the work involved, and said many teachers who had worked hard on accreditation since November were burned out. Wall asked for additional money to pay stipends to staff if enough teachers do not volunteer to help over the summer.

``I look at this as an astronomical task,'' he said.

Although the school system is moving toward greater autonomy, the letter said the school's governance team was unclear about its role and responsibilities. It also said the school did not give underachieving students enough opportunities.

For the first time, the association said the school did not meet the standards for student support services, and faulted the school for ``the overall dysfunction of the guidance department and its prevailing reactive mode of operation.''

Even though the ratio of students to counselors is down slightly since an October 1996 report, it is still about 200 to 1. There are 10 guidance counselors, although only nine counsel students.

Pamela Gray-Bennett, director of the secondary school division of the association, said the school does not have a plan to make sure guidance counselors meet with all students, and lacked procedures to place students in appropriate courses.

Board of trustees Chairman Robert Furek told Wall he would try to help.

``We are by no means out of the woods. If they don't see progress, accreditation could be in trouble,'' he said.

The city's Bulkeley High School also remains on probation, but Weaver High School is fully accredited.